A poetry prize

Poetry prizes are thin on the ground so let’s notice this announcement of the LBH Award for a collection of poems by an American.   And here’s another  review of the winning book,  Button Up! by Alice Schertle, praising its playfulness and whimsy,  and which includes some extracts.

What really had me smiling though was a the definition  included in the award criteria:

Poet: A poet is, in the narrowest sense, a maker of verses. A poet is also imaginative in thought, expressive in language, and graceful in form.

I wasn’t aware that poets are graceful in form…

Like the Newbery prize, though, the LBH is limited to Americans. So I particularly enjoyed this blog posting which is from the US perspective but reminds us of children’s poetry around the world. How about this comment:

Across the globe, poetry’s roots go very deep, from Greek epics like “The Odyssey” to the holy writings from the Bible, the Koran, and Hindu holy books also written in verse. More than 3,000 years of songs of praise exist among the Arab, African, and Asian peoples. Many poetic forms have their beginnings in the Italian petrarchin sonnet, Icelandic epics, Japanese haiku, and the French villanelle. We’ve been “borrowing” poetry for kids from across the ocean since the days of William Blake (Songs of Innocence, 1789), Edward Lear (“The Owl and the Pussycat,” 1871), Robert Louis Stevenson (A Child’s Garden of Verses, 1885) and A. A. Milne (Now We Are Six, 1927).

(We are certainly borrowing back in our course anthology. I’ve spotted quite a few non-British poets: Atwood, Dickinson, Frost, Monro, Nichols, Dr Seuss- who have I missed? )

And here’s a more whimsical comment from the US perspective:

For one current sampling, look for Graham Denton’s British Wild! Rhymes that Roar, co-edited with poet James Carter, an anthology of animal poems (oyster, axolotl, lobster, crocodile, cockroach, crow, and more) running the gamut from silly to serious, with fun “Britishisms” sprinkled throughout, like “pyjamas” and “Mum.”

Prizes! Prizes!

First, I’ve listed the links in footnote 1 from Kenneth Kidd in our Reader (”Prizes! Prizes! Newbery Gold’ in Children’s Literature, Approaches and Territories):

Awards and Prizes Online: Children’s Book Council – unfortunately the awards and prizes database is subscription only

Book Award Annals – the link in the footnote takes you to a general page; this is the children’s books page

Coretta Scott King Book Award

Now here is a miscellany of award-related links I’ve happened across in the last few months:

list of awards “The most comprehensive guide to English-language children’s book awards on the Internet”

so many awards Waterstone’s shortlist – winner to be announced 10 February

another sort of prize “Each year, the National Book Foundation awards a number of prizes of up to $2,500 each to individuals and institutions–or partnerships between the two–that have developed innovative means of creating and sustaining a lifelong love of reading.”

Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award “to encourage and promote diversity in children’s fiction” also see here “The Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award is for a manuscript that celebrates cultural diversity in the widest possible sense, either in terms of its story or in terms of the ethnic and cultural origins of its author.”

Booktrust teenage prize “a national book prize that recognises and celebrates the best in contemporary writing for teenagers”

Guardian Children’s Fiction prize

Roald Dahl Funny Prize

Astrid Lindgren Award “The award is presented to authors, illustrators, oral storytellers and those active in reading promotion work. The award may be presented to a single recipient or to several, regardless of language or nationality.”

Wikipedias’s list of children’s literature prizes

Horn Book awards 2009 “the Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards are among the most prestigious honors in the field of children’s and young adult literature. Winners are selected in three categories: Picture Book, Fiction and Poetry, and Nonfiction. Two Honor Books may be named in each category. On occasion, a book will receive a special citation for its high quality and overall creative excellence. The winning titles must be published in the United States but they may be written or illustrated by citizens of any country. The awards are chosen by an independent panel of three judges who are annually appointed by the Editor of the Horn Book.”

Governer general’s literary awards (Canada)  “The Governor General’s Literary Awards (GGs) are given annually to the best English-language and the best French-language books in each of the seven categories of Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry, Drama, Children’s Literature (text), Children’s Literature (illustration) and Translation (from French to English and English to French).”

Awards and more Awards “Several awards for children’s/YA literature have been announced recently…” a blog posting dated 7 January

Picture book can win award for historical fiction

Technology and children’s books

Fizzing and inspiring  thoughts here, from Katherine Paterson, distinguished author of Bridge to Terabithia*, about whether the ebook readers spell the death of the book. I like her observation that Plato suggested poetry would be killed by literacy because it thrived in the oral tradition (I’m not so sure he was wrong).  She concludes that the book is ‘the perfect technology’.

So really the concern turns back to whether readers will continue to exist (are poetry readers kept in existence only through formal education, and then only just?)  How do we nurture children’s reading? To paraphrase Larkin

Ah, solving that question

Brings the politician and the teacher

In their long coats

Running over the fields.

Katherine is positive:

I feel a sense of pity toward my fellow writers who spend their time writing for the speeded-up audience of adults. They look at me, I realize, with a patronizing air, I who only write for the young. But I doubt that many of them have readers who will read their books over and over again, who will create their own Terabithias to play out endless repetitions of beloved passages.

All power to authors, parents, teachers, librarians, and all those who support the idea of children getting absorbed in books.

* just look at the plot! – fantastic island adventures help child protagonists develop. Spot a pattern here?

Some illustrations to enjoy

First, be warned of bad language in this cartoon. But a good thinking point – a definition of poor fantasy? Our hero learns stuff that blows his  mind, with No Relevance At All to his real life.  (Sorry, Lyra, but his/her is so awkward).

Now, some luscious links.  There’s a website devoted to Shirley Hughes’s Alfie. Shirley Hughes is a national treasure.

And in further homage to illustrators, here’s a website to get lost in – ‘Hey Oscar Wilde! It’s Clobberin’ Time! (found via The Guardian linklog). Start clicking down the list of subjects, on the right of the page, and you could be gone for some time.

And here is a photograph that seems powerfully anti-illustration: book display in a Spanish bookshop with children’s books spine out, completely uniform, showing age-banding not cover illustration (or anything else).  What do you think?  After my first shock, and reading Charlie Butler’s  measured comment, I can begin to see the appeal.

But no. It’s too reading-scheme for me.

Turning children into adults

You may have noticed that I’m a fan of Terry Pratchett – especially of his Nation.  And here’s a quotation from a recent interview that might help bring either option for the next assignment into focus:

‘I think that our job is to turn children into adults, not encourage children to remain children.’

“Only in children’s literature now is the story taken seriously”

In our current study Block, we are enjoying some classic 20th century children’s stories. Has children’s literature kept faith with readers’ pleasure in storytelling,  in a way that literary novels have failed to?

The  quotation in this post’s title is attributed to Philip Pullman. I’ve not found the original context but it’s quoted in a full-length interview with Pullman here. (Pullman also has many other things to say, including comments about his distate for fantasy yet how he found it useful for Northern Lights; and discussion of words and pictures which may relate to our upcoming studies in Block 5).

This is I think a swipe at  literary novels which adopt experimental approaches.  In contrast, there are ‘crossover’ children’s books like Pullman’s, not to mention Rowling’s, which have been hugely popular with adults.  So is story telling only truly alive  in  children’s books?

Today’s Guardian mentions some of the older ‘golden age’ stories for children we are encountering on our course.  They arose in the late nineteenth – early twentieth centuries and have been taken up enthusiastically by film makers:

This was the age that threw up Treasure Island, The Jungle Book, Peter Pan, The Wind in the Willows, The Railway Children, the Jeeves and Wooster series and finally, in the 1920s, the queen of crime herself, Agatha Christie, and her Poirot and Miss Marple series.

Every one of these has been rendered cinematically for a mass audience on several occasions. We like stories, and especially when they are accompanied by appealing, strong and identifiable characters who can be interpreted by stars.

So are the storytellers  working for film and TV now? Hmm – critics of Avatar find its plotting sadly lacking.

But perhaps the tide has turned, and novels for adults are rediscovering story:

All of this is changing. The revolution is under way. The novel is getting entertaining again. Writers like Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Donna Tartt, Kelly Link, Audrey Niffenegger, Richard Price, Kate Atkinson, Neil Gaiman, and Susanna Clarke, to name just a few, are busily grafting the sophisticated, intensely aware literary language of Modernism onto the sturdy narrative roots of genre fiction: fantasy, science fiction, detective fiction, romance.

This idea that children’s literature keeps genres in safe keeping, can indeed be in the van of development, is one that is in our course. A free virtual coffee to anyone who can pin that down to an article in one of our Readers.

Most distinguished contribution to American literature for children, 2010

… is (according to the Newbery medal awarders,  children’s librarians in America) a fantasy story by Rebecca Stead, When you Reach Me (the link is to an enthusiastic review). The criteria for the award are set out here.

It is discussed in the Guardian, here, particularly in relation to Madeleine L’Engle’s fantasy story A Wrinkle in Time which won the Newbery in 1963.

More representations of childhood

I’m a bit late with this little bit of prompting – you’re masters of this topic by now, and my links below date back to 2006.  But it’s a fascinating area for children’s literature.

Trying to identify how authors imagine or represent childhood can involve scrutinising texts for their Puritan, Enlightenment, Romantic, gendered, socially stratified, imperial, colonial, and no doubt all sorts of other, ideologies. Including – delightfully and most productively – some ambiguous and even subversive views of those ideologies.

But it’s a bit harder to see what’s going on in relation to our own times. What are modern times doing to our view of childhood?

Is our culture toxic to childhood, as 110 experts claimed in a letter to The Telegraph? Or is that just typical older generation panic?*

*My thanks to the OUSA EA300 student forum for these links.

Who cares about the illustrators?

A delightful gallery of ‘top ten’ nursery rhymes with some gorgeous photos and illustrations (Rackham, Greenaway).

But why oh why aren’t all the  illustrators  credited?

How time changes things

Julia Eccleshare claims in today’s Guardian that time has robbed Swallows and Amazons of its universality.  I’m not sure that middle class children having a holiday sailing adventure  in the countryside, fortified by loving parents and a knowledge of Robinson Crusoe, was ever universal; but she makes a clear statement that is in line with many of our course ideas:

Attitudes to children, interactions between adults and children and especially wider social attitudes change swiftly, and books sometimes get left behind.

She also discusses realism and fantasy:

Fantasy has an additional attraction for authors as it allows them to write about children being unsupervised and taking risks. In real life, children are no longer able to do this, and authors are strongly warned away from showing children in potentially “risky” situations. Authors also need to avoid situations in which a child talks to a stranger. In other words, “real” stories ­reflect the very proscribed and watched state into which we have ­corralled children. To counter this, contemporary novels often begin with a child losing a mobile phone, freeing them from outside interference. In fantasy and ­historical fiction this isn’t an issue and the child can be bold, brave, cowardly or sensible. But, of course, there are good stories set in the real world.

I think her column – if ‘book doctor’ continues’ – may be a fund of sensible ideas.

She’s  certainly right that time changes things. Check out today’s lovely Guardian photo with one showing her earlier haircut